Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

CHAPTER 2SHATTERING ILLUSIONSA National Security Strategy for 2009-2017Col. Chet Richards (U.S. Air Force, ret.)War no longer exists. Confrontation, conflict, and combat undoubtedly existall round the world … and states still have armed forces which they use as asymbol of power. None the less, war as cognitively known to most non-combatants,war as battle in a field between men and machinery, war as a massivedeciding event in a dispute in international affairs: such war no longer exists. 1The new administration will take office in January 2009, inheriting a budget for theDepartment of Defense that will exceed $600 billion dollars per year, roughly equalto the rest of the world put together. 2 Because we are not facing the possibility ofarmed conflict with the rest of the world put together, it is clear that some adjustmentis appropriate.In theory, such adjustment is straightforward. The administration considers trendsin the world situation and devises a national security strategy to deal with those trends.It then examines the capabilities of our current military forces, identifies areas whereour forces are either deficient or superfluous and proposes a plan to rationalize them.As part of the planning process, the administration considers various combinations offorces, facilities and new programs until it settles on one that provides the requisitelevel of capability at a risk and for a cost that the president considers acceptable. Therisks and costs may be domestic – political – as well as strategic.What is a “National Security Strategy” and Do We Need One?Some would argue that producing a “national security strategy” is a wasteful exercisebecause the process must take too many unknowns into account. The result, in thisview, is little more than a public relations gambit to sell decisions that were madethrough domestic political trade-offs or by inertia. Others might take the positionthat although a strategy could be useful, divulging it would be dangerous because itsdissemination would alert our enemies.Before proposing a strategy, therefore, it is useful to consider what it is that wewant such a strategy to do. The most basic question is why we need a formal strategyat all. Why not, in other words, just “wing it”? This means that at any given time, forany particular problem, the administration takes the action that appears most likelyto accomplish its objectives. Why wouldn’t this work?